Notes

I borrowed this book from the library and finished it the same day. It's a great read for customer evangelists and other people who talk to customers to get awesome ideas for innovation. I'll post a better book summary sometime, but for now, here are my raw book notes.

4

The "outside in" approach is to flip the innovation process around and assume that customers have outcomes they want to achieve, they have deep knowledge about their own circumstances and contexts, and they are not happy with the way they have to do things today.

7

You win by finding the lead users in your industry and commercializing their inventions.

7

You win by engaging with your most visionary customers to co-design new products and new processes

7

You win by enabling customers to troubleshoot each others' problems, hack your solutions, and modify and extend your product to meet their needs.

8

Winning formula: customers/users who are passionate about something they're trying to accomplish or something they want; a deep understanding and appreciation by those customers/users of their current reality: their context, their situation, their constraints, how things are currently doing.; A clear vision by those customers of their ideal outcome

9

Lead users - not necessarily customers, but have explored innovative ways to get things done and are usually willing to share

10

What are the characteristics of lead customers/lead users?

Their self-image is deeply connected to the problem domain at hand.

They are passionate (positively or negatively) about the outcomes they want and frustrated about the issues that get in the way of achieving those outcomes.

They are influential in their organizations and/or in their circle of family and friends.

They have thought deeply about their problem space/domain of expertise

They are insightful about their own context and they can easily articulate their conditions of satisfaction

They are imaginative and visionary

They are pragmatic and realistic about the need for viable business models and win/win situations

If they are true "lead users," they have already invented their own solution and often are happy to share their solution with other insightful users.

Roles customers play in outside innovation

Lead customers are a special breed of innovators. Not finding what they need, they invent new solutions themselves, without being asked. Watch them, support them, and commercialize their inventions. Engage them in co-design activities. Give them innovation toolkits that enable them to extend, modify, and/or redesign your products and services. Then watch what they do and profit from it.

Contributors - encourage and acknowledge contributors. Make sure their contributions are recognized and appreciated.

Consultants - deep subject matter expertise. Invite them to become part of your company.

Guides - they add value by creating new knowledge

Promoters

38

For example, in one rapid exchange that lasted two days, two members of this community of innovative hackers designed a version of the brick that was four times as fast as the original.

Hosting your own online forums seems to be a critical ingredient to success in supporting customer-led innovation.

66

Formal lead user program at National Instruments. Hall Martin, product strategist: "Technologists help us to define new products; early adopters help with marketing, positioning and in providing beachhead applications; existing customers help us define and prioritize what should be in the next version of a product; and pragmatists keep us from going too far afield."

132

Many freeformers aren't employed full-time & don't pass credit tests, even if they have assets and the ability to repay.

133

"But now there are also young people coming into the workforce who don't want to follow in their parents' footsteps and join a firm with the idea of working their way up from the bottom to the top. They realize that there probably won't be a 'top' for them. They prefer to design their own lifestyles and incomes around the things they care about."

231

1. Industry-specific solutions, 2. Support services, 3. Custom development - smartest guys in the room, 4. Software as a service

239

Designing the right mix of open source business models: identify a market, certify an open source software for specialized market, add value, identify customer-critical scenario and offer as a service

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Page: 2007.06.14

Updated: 2007-06-1422:03:1222:03:12-0400

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